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The First Minister and myself met on 7 June 2023 to discuss the Deposit Return Scheme.

A suite of impact assessments has been updated to reflect the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Amendment Regulations 2023, which changed the implementation date of the scheme to 1 March 2024, alongside a number of simplification measures.

Updated versions of the Islands Communities Impact Assessment, Fairer Scotland Impact Assessment and Equalities Impact Assessments will be published shortly, alongside a supplementary analysis to the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment in light of the amendments laid in May

These changes pre-date my statement to Parliament on 7 June 2023 on the reset of date to 2025 as a result of conditions set by the UK Government very late in the process and I will be setting out detailed proposals for Parliament as appropriate.

This is a matter for SEPA. The information requested is not held centrally. SEPA have provided the following information.

Calls to Pollution Hotline in each year since 2019

The Scottish Government is committed to working with COSLA to agree a New Deal with Local Government in Scotland that promotes sustainability, empowerment and provides greater fiscal flexibility over local funding with clear accountability for delivery of shared priorities and outcomes.

As part of the New Deal, we are committed to concluding the Local Governance Review in this parliament, ensuring that decisions are taken as close as possible to those they affect the most is at the heart of our approach to public service reform in Scotland.

We are continuing to progress the implementation of the recommendations of the Women in Agriculture Taskforce. As part of this we continue to deliver solutions that deliver positive change for women living and working in Scottish agriculture through the Women in Agriculture Development Programme.

This financial year (2023-24) we are providing £500,000 to support further activity and opportunities for women in agriculture. We also remain committed to increasing our funding to £600,000 per year over the course of this Parliament.

Tables 1 and 2 present the number of properties receiving SBBS as at 1 June 2021 and 1 July 2022, in Clackmannanshire and Stirling council areas. These figures are based on the billing data provided by councils to the Scottish Government as at those dates.

Equivalent figures for 2023 are not currently available. These are expected to be published in late 2023.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of properties eligible for the Small Business Bonus Scheme, as we are unable to reliably identify business chains.

Table 1: Properties receiving SBBS relief in Clackmannanshire.

The Scottish Government’s 2021 Population Strategy contains a focus on ensuring our population is sustainably distributed; however, it does not set explicit population targets.

A range of work is ongoing across government to achieve this, for example the National Planning Framework 4, which reflects the need for planning to identify the amount of land required for future homes and to enable more balanced demographic change.

Additionally, Scottish Government is a full partner in the Glasgow City Region Deal, which seeks to deliver key regeneration and development projects across employability and transport, with aims to boost to the city region's economy.

Data is not available from 2007 as there were formerly no records held at a national level at that time. This information has been held on the national recruitment system from 2018 onwards, currently providing 5 years of finalised data and 1 year of provisional data.

In the following table are the number of nominations from Scottish Medical Schools for admission to Foundation training. Nominations are students that the medical school believes will pass finals and be eligible to progress to Foundation training. The data is uploaded in September/October, the year ahead of Foundation training starting, for example, 2022 data is for Foundation training which will start in August 2023. This information does not include those trainees who were withdrawn either by their medical school or by the student themselves.

The Scottish Government has always been clear that we will work closely with the UK and devolved Governments to maximise interoperability of the schemes, while acknowledging that waste and recycling policy is fully devolved.

In order to do this, the UK Government must provide clarity on its own deposit return scheme by introducing regulations for its scheme as soon as possible.

I wrote to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Defra’s Minister for Environmental Quality and Resilience on 6 June setting out that I was keen to work collaboratively with other administrations across the UK to push forward work on issues around interoperability, while ensuring that the wishes and competence of the Scottish Parliament are respected.

The Implementation Advisory Group (IAG) was formed when Zero Waste Scotland was developing DRS, carrying out associated impact assessments and working with Scottish Government to develop and lay the original DRS regulations. It met during 2019 and 2020 and was then disbanded once the regulations were laid as ‘ownership’ of the scheme was then passed on to the Scheme Administrator.